


Interstellar

by hybridshade (shimyaku)



Category: Supernatural RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Challenge Response, Doom, Impending Apocalypse, Injury, M/M, Meant To Be, Science Fiction & Fantasy, Supernatural Spring Fling 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-01
Updated: 2014-05-01
Packaged: 2018-01-21 12:45:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1550960
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shimyaku/pseuds/hybridshade
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When an alien artefact is brought to Earth, it threatens to bring the world's doom with it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Interstellar

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ephermeralk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ephermeralk/gifts).



> **A/N:** written for [](http://spnspringfling.livejournal.com/profile)[**spnspringfling**](http://spnspringfling.livejournal.com/) for [](http://ephermeralk.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://ephermeralk.livejournal.com/)**ephermeralk**. Not my usual style but I'm happy with how this turned out. Finally reposted!

Jensen was one of the first.

He hadn't known until months later that it was some inter-dimensional artefact that had started it all. Of course, he'd known _something_ was up – the whole goddamn _world_ had in some way or another. What with the weather acting all fucked up, the sun disappearing, and all the sudden, monumental natural disasters that had started occurring all at once. Some story had spread about the earth's core gearing up to explode, and a good lot of the world had gone mad with fear. But a good lot of the world clearly didn't keep tabs on the astral exploration a lot of governments and private companies had begun embarking on. And while Jensen was no obsessive, he'd known enough to _know_ that all that 'journeying into the unknown' stuff was going to come back to bite them one day.

Some genius had kicked that particular hornet's nest way too fucking hard.

Not long after the eruptions, and the floods, and the earthquakes, the artefact had 'come to life'. And that was when the real trouble started. Most people that were 'poisoned' by its effect simply became sick. Others – and only very few of them – became changed. And Jensen was one of them.

At first he'd just thought he was getting sick like a quarter of the population before him. But then the fever – the burning – hadn't stopped, it had only gotten worse. Worse and worse again until the whole of his being was nothing but liquid fire, melting his flesh and bone to the point where that red-hot pain was all he knew. He'd laid there on the floor of his apartment for what eventually amounted to four days. Then they had come for him.

They'd arrived in some kind of military chopper, another younger girl on board – red-haired, pyjama-clad, and holding her head like she was seconds away from ripping her hair out – and men in protective gear who'd picked him up and carried him off.

His memory was hazy, but he recalled them throwing him in an iron-walled cell. And he'd stayed there until he could control it.

The fire, that is. And the smoke and the ash.

For that was what he was now. All flickering embers and broad flames, licking at the air.

The day he'd walked out of that cell was the day they'd put him to work. He was theirs now. They'd been collecting people like him from the start. Whether they'd known in advance they were going to need some miraculous army he never did find out, but if it weren't for Jensen and the handful of others like him… Well, who knows? What would otherwise have happened when intergalactic invaders started attacking in earnest, trying so desperately to get their hands on that artefact Earth had somehow acquired…

And it never stopped. They never stopped coming.

He couldn’t fathom why they so intently refused to call it a war, because that’s exactly what it was. New threats would appear from the sky, blasting lasers and shooting balls of energy like something out of a classic sci-fi movie. Those like Jensen - and there were less than a dozen of them in those early days - they had to be spread out across the globe, always ready to go at a moment’s notice. Jensen was in New York and charged with protecting most of North America. There was supposedly another over on the west coast, but her abilities weren’t exactly ‘destructive’, not like Jensen’s were.

When those streams of ships floated down into the atmosphere, swarming like flies, he laid waste to them as though it were easier than breathing. Metal crumbled to dust in the heat of his flames, engines choked on clouds of ash, and the creatures on board were suffocated by the smoke.

For a while he was on top, always with the upper hand, always winning. But they never stopped coming. Each invasion would bring more. Until Jensen reached a point where he collapsed from exhaustion before he could bring the next legion toppling down like winged dominoes, feathers burned to a crisp. Again they sent the men in protective gear to pick him up - no one in their right mind would touch him, after all.

The following night, his limbs still laden with weariness, he climbed up to the roof of headquarters and watched the night sky explode. Military forces threw bullet, after grenade, after missile, useless against their teeming enemy. He should have been anxious, fearful at the sight of their gradual failing. But in reality, he couldn’t have cared less.

“Mind if I join you for the fireworks?”

Jensen blinked up at his sudden companion. The guy looked huge - even more so clad in his tight-fitting special-ops gear. All in black, just like Jensen’s.

“Who’re you?”

“Jared. I’ve come to help.”

“They’re letting more of us crazies outta the cage now, huh?”

“You need me. They’re getting too many for one person to handle. And I’m no more crazy than you.”

Jensen chuckled at that, only startling when he thought about Jared’s words a second time.

“Wait, they let you watch?”

“Nope.” Jared grinned as he sat down beside him. “I can hijack electrical pulses - physically and mentally. I didn’t exactly need to _watch_ to see the show.”

Jensen gestured with his head. “Go on, then. You’ve seen me fight - fair’s fair.”

Closing his eyes, Jared reached out, cutting a line through the air with his hand. A half dozen ships immediately came to a halt in mid-air, then dropped like dead weights, sinking and sizzling into the harbour below.

“I’m not here just to fight,” Jared clarified.

“You’re here to end it, aren’t you.” It wasn’t a question, so Jensen didn’t phrase it as one. Besides his obvious abilities, Jensen _knew_ things. Things that he was sure of right down to his bones. Yet another point to add to the list of unexplained.

“You and I will end it together.”

Jared took his hand and Jensen jolted. No one touched him anymore. _No one_.

He forced himself to breathe.

“What is it?”

“They call it the Sphericon. A group of genius douchebags at the Pentagon found it on an unknown planet they got to through an inter-dimensional rip. Thought it would be a great idea to bring it back here and make use of its energy. Which might have worked, in theory, except that the Sphericon is sentient. Its power cannot be harnessed by the hands of others.”

“You mean it’s doing this because it _wants_ to?”

“It’s doing this to protect itself.”

“It means to destroy us.”

“The other way around, more like.” Jared tugged Jensen close. “Yes, it caused some destruction, but only in order to create you and me. It made us to protect it from all those who would try to take it for themselves. Bringing it here to Earth’s atmosphere caused the Sphericon to awaken, calling these enemies to wage war, seeking its power.”

And then Jensen _knew_. “If we put it back where it came from it will sleep again.”

Jared pulled him to his feet.

 

~//~//~

 

In the aftermath the weather had suddenly calmed, the sun reemerged, the earth stilled, and all those whom had been sick were well again. Their enemies from the skies had turned on their heels and retreated, no longer interested in fighting for an item that didn’t exist in this corner of the universe.

Jensen looked down at his hands, the skin tight and pinched and discoloured. His face had been mercifully spared, but a hefty portion of his body now carried the type of scarring only seen with third degree burns. The artefact’s return home had taken with it not only the destruction it had wrought, but also those gifts it had bestowed upon so few. And they had paid for it dearly.

The fire that was once inside him had surely left its mark. He still had nightmares about it - the flames ripping themselves from his body, his skin melting from the inside.

Even worse were the echoes of Jared’s screams. His body convulsing, fingertips snapping with electric charge. They’d been too far apart to reach one another. Though, had they touched, it was more likely they would have only hurt one another more, for all that they might have sought each other’s comfort.

Jensen had passed out only moments later. He imagined the men coming to get him, carrying him to the medical ward he’d eventually woken up in. Had they needed their protective gear that time? Had his wounds posed a threat rather than ask for pity? Knowing _them_ , it was likely.

Once they let him out he retreated to his old apartment - the type of cage he was used to. More than two years had passed but someone had thought to keep this place waiting for him. Everything was as he remembered it, if a bit musty and cloaked with a blanket of dust. Nothing that couldn’t be fixed. He left that job for another day, though, bypassing the bedroom and heading straight up to the roof, sitting himself on a ledge.

It was already afternoon, and he watched in silence as the sun disappeared and the stars took its place. The sky was clear, black, and undisturbed but for those millions of flecks of light. Gone were the enemy ships, gone were the explosions of bullets and rocket launchers. And gone was--

“Thought I’d find you up here.”

Jensen didn’t have to turn to _know_.

“And I knew because I’ve been the same. I wait for the night to come, and I sit under the stars, just waiting for a sign.”

“The Sphericon is gone,” Jensen said with finality, “There’s no enemy to fight anymore.”

“Only the daytime,” Jared laughed.

There were footsteps from behind and then Jared pulled him back from the ledge, bringing him to his feet and standing them face to face.

“I fell in love with you watching you rain down fire from above.”

Jensen’s breath caught. No one had been in love with him before. “But I’m--” _nothing without fire._

“But I don’t need that fire to still be in love.” Jared rapped Jensen over the chest. “There’s fire enough in _here_ to keep me happy.”

“That’s... a really sappy thing to say.”

Jared smiled knowingly. “The truth is many things.”

Jensen turned away with a grimace. “Oh, God, help me.”

“God ran away to the stars. He can’t help you now.”

Taking his hands, Jared grasped tight to Jensen’s scarred fingers and slid them up beneath his shirt. Jensen had lost a lot of sensitivity in his fingertips, but could still feel the ridge of freshly healed scar to one side of Jared’s chest. None of them escaped without cost.

“Fancy pacemaker,” Jared offered, “And a whole lot of nerve damage down the left side of my body. It’s tolerable, though.”

“It’s fucked, is what it is.”

“The truth is many things.”

He could tell Jared was about to say something else smartass-like, so Jensen shut him up with his mouth. Lips pressing deep and warmth spreading all over - right down to those fingers that barely felt anything anymore. Jared bit his bottom lip and pulled back just a little, something wild in his eyes.

“You got room for two in that bed of yours, space cadet?”

Jensen slicked his tongue over his teeth, collecting whatever trace Jared had left behind. “Maybe... Why? You gonna make me see stars?”

“Whole galaxies if you let me,” Jared grinned.

“I’ve got all day, Sunshine. Lets see what you can do.”

 

~//END//~


End file.
